Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb

Spoiler Alert!

Being an avid reader such as I am, I had never expected The Farseer Trilogy and The Tawny Man to compare to many of the other novels I've read, never mind engage me more than any of them. After having read them, I feel now as much a part of that world as I do the real world, and I prefer the former! The talent Robin Hobb possesses is unquestionably brilliant and I would recommend her work in a heartbeat.

Fool's Fate, for the most part, is a work of genius. My only reservation about it is the ending, but we'll get to that later. As the novel progresses, you fall even deeper into that world, it drags you in and you become addicted, much like the Skill river! I personally felt, that although parts of the book are quite slow, it is the beauty of the detail that makes it so incredible. Perhaps it is even the detail building up that allows you to find a deeper level of emotion in the more memorable parts. I, for one, felt the death of the Fool almost as keenly as FitzChivalry himself. And when he was brought back, I knew that joy not just as a happiness when a book takes a turn you wanted it to, but as personally as if I had known and loved the Fool myself. That is the power of Robin Hobb's writing, and it isn't to be underestimated.

So although this book touched me deeply and has given me a strange type of wisdom, the ending just didn't fit, not for me at least. I can see why many people were happy to have Fitz and Molly find each other again, but it grated on me. He had come too far from the boy who loved her, that sixteen years apart had changed him in many ways and it didn't seem plausible that they could come back from that. I would have liked for them to find peace with each other, but as people who had settled their past but knew they had come too long a way from who they had been.

As for the Fool and Fitz, I could see how that was going to turn out, and I hated it. I felt the author had made a grievous mistake in how she ended their relationship after having been through so much together. I had hoped, though I knew different, that if they had to part they would at least have a resolution, not Fitz missing the Fool's trip to Buckkeep by a week or so. Naturally I would have much preferred that they didn't part at all. This is the main reason I didn't give the novel a higher rating.

Another reason the rating suffered was the way that Fitz was not written true to his character. He seemed to only care about Burrich's death in how he felt it would affect him and Molly. Not only that, but the sheer passivity and lack of emotion he felt in knowing he had missed the Fool's trip to Buckkeep and would never see him again, was horrifying. It seems to me that after a story of this length has started to be written, it takes on a life of it's own, and the author doesn't so much devise it anymore as the story tells itself through the author's hands, and this felt like a sort of betrayal of that story, a betrayal of the character we've come to know as well as we know ourselves. I can only hope that she'll fix it with another book, though I doubt it.

Despite the ending, it's still a wonderful and beautiful story that I would recommend to anyone, fantasy lover or not. It's more a story of real people living their lives, in a world not so different from ours, than the magic and surrealism of it. It carries wisdom in it's words that everyone should have.


In that last dance of chances
I shall partner you no more.
I shall watch another turn you
As you move across the floor.

In that last dance of chances
When I bid your life good-bye
I will hope she treats you kindly.
I will hope you learn to fly.

In that last dance of chances
When I know you'll not be mine
I will let you go with longing
And the hope that you'll be fine.

In that last dance of chances
We shall know each other's minds.
We shall part with our regrets
When the tie no longer binds.

Spoiler warning!

As a fantasy reader it was only by coincidence that I stumbled across Robin Hobb's Farseer series. Of the three triologies, it is indeed the last series, The Tawny man, that made the deepest and most lasting impression on me. The previous books in this series, Fool's errand and Golden Fool, build up to an intense climax in the last book, Fool's Fate. Robin Hobb has an excellant way of involving the reader in the thoughts and emotions of the main characters, in a way that surpasses all other fantasy books I have ever read.

And that is possibly the reason why I personally cannot let this book go. I have read and reread the ending of the book a dozen times, and it still leaves me unsatisfied. At first I believed it was the sadness of the parting of Fitz and the Fool that troubled me. It plagued me that the author did not want to end the book in a way that let the two of them stay together. After a while, however, I felt it was more the inconsistency of the ending that bothered me. First there is Fitz whose bonding to the Fool is so strong that he is willing to take the Fool's place in death. Then there is the Fool's love for Fitz that is so strong and selfless that he lets Fitz go so that he can have a complete life. But then they are ripped apart by fate, and the Fool departs Buckkeep believing that Fitz (most likely) is dead. And after learning of the Fool's departure under these misconceptions, Fitz does not do anything.

This ending, which in my opinion isn't truly an end, is why I cannot rate the book higher. This is exclusively for personal reasons, for as a literary work, there is no doubt that this book is beyond almost anything I have read in the fantasy genre. In fact, I believe it is because the characters are so alive and so believable, that I have made the story in the book my own, and I too feel so keenly that the parting of Fitz and the Fool is unsatisfactory.

I dream that the story will continue in another book. I dream that we might meet Fitz and the Fool again. And most of all I dream that this time the story will end happily for the Beloved Fool as well, he who of all characters touched my heart the most.

Fool's Fate, what a way to end a nine book series. This is fantasy at it's best, and that may be because its not at all that much fantasy. These books that Robin Hobb has written are based on the characters, not the magic they weave, the dragons they ride, or the battles they fight. The interaction between Fitz and Fool, between Fitz and his daughter, Nettle, between Fitz and Molly, all are something that each of us can relate to. None of us has ridden a dragon, none of us talk to our animals using 'the Wit', rarely, few of us have fought a battle with nothing but a long sword. But each and every one of us have loved someone, only for them to never return, most of us adults have stopped at nothing to protect our children, and we all have longed for that certain someone. Hobb puts down on paper her version of each, and oh is it compelling.

I've read a good bit of fantasy and yet have I read a book that ends the way this one does. I won't spoil it, but it ends the way real life happens-never the way you want it to happen. Yes it's sad and no it's not how you want the characters to be left standing, but it is so real that you can't deny the originality of it, originality in a sense of real life in comparison to fantasy.

To me, these characters are real, they are a part of my every day life. I think about them from time to time and sometimes I say, 'hmm, what would Fitz do?' I'm not obsessive, it's just Hobb has written characters that are almost too true to life. These books seem more like autobiographies than they do as modern day fantasy fiction. The Assassin's Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Tawny Man Trilogy hit close to home.